Housing and planning

Responding to the challenges of providing affordable rural housing

The fifth paper in CPRE Housing Foresight series identifies a range of solutions to increase and sustain affordable housing in rural areas. These include better funding and guidance, incentives to identify suitable sites, and rural exemptions from national policies which restrict rural affordable housing.

This brochure considers the need for affordable housing in rural communities and how it can be built to best meet the needs of local people in the long term. Prepared by the National Housing Federation in conjunction with CPRE and other partners.

Ensuring Responsive Development on Previously Developed Land

CPRE's third Housing Foresight paper argues that large scale brownfield sites require a comprehensive approach to development which should adopt best practice from Europe.It also considers the development of small-scale brownfield sites in England, finding that a register of these sites together with a flexible approach to space standards can make the most of their potential.

Why brownfield development works

To investigate the extent to which brownfield is a viable option for development, CPRE commissioned construction analysts Glenigan to compare the speed of residential development on brownfield sites with development on greenfield, once these sites have been granted planning permission.

Why we still need the brownfield first approach

This report responds to one of the potentially most far reaching changes proposed in the Government’s consultation draft National Planning Policy Framework. It examines the proposals to cease giving clear priority nationally to development on brownfield sites (formally called ‘previously developed land’) before greenfield. It also considers the implications of the related recent policy changes made by the Government to drop the minimum housing density range which has until recently been recommended as national policy.

How ‘land promoters’ exploit legal loopholes at the expense of communities and the countryside

This short briefing sheds some light onto how self-styled ‘land promoters’ make lucrative profits by exploiting the planning system and working against local wishes.

Land promoters persuade landowners to allow them to pursue planning permission on their land for a share in the profits once it is sold on for development.

Communities welcome good development that follows local and neighbourhood plans, but land promoters actively work against local wishes for the sake of their own profit. National planning policy allows and even encourages land promoters to do this through loopholes in the NPPF.

CPRE undertook analysis of appeal decisions concerning four land promoters, between 1 April 2012 and 31 August 2017. It shows that even in cases where local authorities had an up to date 5 year housing land supply, one in three cases are approved.

In the majority of these cases, land promoters sought to undermine authorities further by openly challenging authorities’ housing land supply. This, and other forms of speculative development, have lost communities’ faith in the planning system.

Land is a precious resource, and must be used wisely. CPRE supports a ‘brownfield first, greenfield last’ strategy as a general principle. However, just because a site is brownfield does not mean it should necessarily be developed.

CPRE believes that a healthy, thriving countryside is important for everyone, no matter where they live. Our approach to housing policy embodies this belief. Good planning should provide everyone with a decent home they can afford. While housing development can have a significant landscape impact we believe it is possible to avoid sporadic development in the countryside and the unsustainable sprawl of our towns and cities. Meeting the housing needs of rural communities is particularly important if they are to thrive. In the national context of a growing and changing population it is important to meet the need for new housing in England. This document outlines how CPRE believes this can be done without unnecessarily damaging the countryside.